With a global value of over 2.5 trillion dollars and over 75 million people employed, the fashion sector is a significant element of our economy. Clothing output doubled between 2000 and 2014, indicating that the industry has experienced phenomenal expansion in recent decades. People bought 60% more clothes in 2014 than they did in 2000, but they only kept them for half as long. While the fashion business is flourishing, more and more attention is being drawn to the industry's extensive list of negative environmental repercussions. Fashion production contributes 10% of global carbon emissions, depletes water supplies, and pollutes rivers and streams. It produces 20% of the world's wastewater and consumes more energy than the aviation and shipping industries put together. In addition, global fashion requires 93 billion metric tonnes of clean water each year. Cotton is a particularly thirsty plant. One kilogramme of cotton needed to make a pair of jeans, for example, can require 7,500 to 10,000 litres of water. Cotton farming also necessitates the use of pesticides and insecticides, which degrade the soil; runoff from fertilised cotton fields carries excess nutrients to water bodies, resulting in eutrophication and algae blooms. The use of harmful chemicals in the dyeing of clothes is responsible for 17 to 20% of global industrial water pollution.
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Every year, 70 million tonnes of trees are felled to meet the fashion industry's demand for wood pulp to create rayon, viscose, and other materials. By 2034, that number is predicted to have doubled, hastening destruction in some of the world's most vulnerable forests. Every year, the fashion sector emits 1.2 million metric tonnes of CO2. In 2018, it created more greenhouse gas emissions than France, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined. Polyester, a material derived from fossil fuels, is used in around 65 percent of all clothes and consumes 70 million barrels of oil every year. In addition, the fashion business utilises a lot of plastic made from fossil fuels for packaging and hangers.
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Only about 1% of clothing is recycled to generate new garments. Clothing fibres are polymers, which are long chains of chemically linked molecules. These polymers shorten and weaken as a result of washing and using garments, and by the time a garment is discarded, the polymers are too short to transform into a robust new fabric. Furthermore, most textile-to-textile recycling systems today are unable to separate colours, pollutants, or even a mix of fibres like polyester and cotton. As a result, each year, 53 million metric tonnes of unwanted clothing are burnt or disposed of in landfills, producing methane, a potent global warming greenhouse gas.
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Many people wore just athleisure clothing, however the flexibility and breathability in most athleisure originates from the usage of synthetic plastic fibres such as polyester, nylon, acrylic, spandex, and others, which are all composed of plastic. Microplastics from synthetic fibers are shed into the wastewater when synthetic clothing is laundered. Some of it is filtered out with human waste at wastewater treatment plants, and the resulting sludge is utilized as agricultural fertilizer. Microplastics then find their way into the soil and into the food chain. Microplastics that escape the treatment plant end up in rivers and oceans, as well as in the atmosphere, where they are carried into the atmosphere by seawater droplets. The apparel sector is said to be responsible for 35 percent of microplastics in the water. While some brands utilize "recycled polyester" from PET bottles, which produces 50 to 25% fewer emissions than virgin polyester, polyester recycling is limited, therefore these clothing frequently wind up in the landfill, where microfibers can be shed. Marine life, as well as birds and turtles, are harmed by microplastics. Microplastic particles have previously been discovered in our food, water, and air; according to one research, Americans consume 74,000 microplastic particles each year. While there is rising worry about this, the dangers to human health are still unknown.
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